Duplicate work

Some students are fortunate enough to be able to work on their assignments with others who are also taking this class. I have no problem with that. Most workplaces encourage people to work together.

This is still college, though, not the workplace. You have to be able to give me, as your instructor, something that will allow me to do my job, which is to individually assess your work and your skills for the college.

I cannot accept assignments that are identical duplicates of one another right down to the same typos, the same mistakes, and so on. The college requires each student receive an individual grade for their work, and I have no way to assign an individual grade if I don't know how much of the work you did. The best I can do in these circumstances is to split the grade between the people (for example, give you 50%). Nobody wants that to happen.

It's okay to work together to solve problems, but implement the solution yourself. Type your own code, without copying it letter-for-letter from a classmate. Put your own thought into it. Don't worry about making mistakes; we can correct those. I can't help you if I can't see where you need the help, though. The goal of this class is to teach you basic skills. I can't do that if you don't show me YOUR skills.

Protect yourself

Developing work for the Internet, both in this classroom and in a job, means it's going to be put where anybody can steal it and claim it as their own. Plan now for what you'll do if this happens to you and you have to prove that you're the one who did the work. Many options are available, including:

• Keep a backup copy of a pre-release draft, burned onto a write-only CD so the file date is evident. (Yes, you can fool this system, but anyone who's going to go to all that trouble would save time just doing their own work; we assume they're stealing your content because of time constraints.)
• Put something in the code that only you know about or can explain. (Peculiar spacing or indents, perhaps, or other irregularities that won't be obvious.)
• Make the code so obtuse no one can read it. (Do NOT expect a good grade if you do this, though!)